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Quiet Desperation

Living on borrowed time, and in no rush to pay back

Posted
Wednesday, December 26, 2018 10:11 am

Craig Marshall Smith

Column by Craig Marshall Smith

I conclude every calendar year of columns with one that explores what makes life worth living.

The time has come, the walrus said. This year’s will be a little different.

First, I think an important question to ask is this: Is life worth living?

Many think it is not.

And too many of the many are far too young. The statistics are very depressing.

Anthony Bourdain answered “No” in 2018. So did Kate Spade, and so did two former UCLA basketball stars, Billy Knight and Tyler Honeycutt.

Knight wrote, “I’m lost in life, and I feel like there’s no hope. I have no friends with me here. I have no wife, girlfriend. I have nothing.”

Knight had been arrested less than a month before his suicide and charged with sexually abusing a child.

It hasn’t been a pretty year in America. It hasn’t been great, that’s for sure.

But I’m planning to stick around.

My past lists have always included obvious entries, like Jennifer and the dog and fine art and films. I thought I would forgo them this time, and cite some that are more unusual.

Like the “tomcat smell” of eucalyptus. That was Raymond Chandler’s wording. I wish it had been mine.

Eucalyptus trees were common near our home in Fullerton, Calif. When I get a whiff now, I time-travel to 1958-60. I was a kid with a bicycle, a baseball glove, a transistor radio, and zero worries.

The color navy.

The Durango Diner, 957 Main Ave. in Durango. Don’t leave without asking owner Gary Broad for a jar of Durango Diner Green Chili. The best ever.